The show’s guest in this episode is Charlotte Otter. She is an author, speaker, and advisor with global experience leading communications at companies like SAP and Anglo American. She now helps organizations of all sizes manage reputation, drive change, and build effective teams. In today’s noisy world, she believes it’s stories and our humanity that truly break through.

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Reputation, Resilience, and New Leaders with Charlotte Otter

Hello. I am Melanie Parish. I’m one of the co-hosts of the Experimental Leader podcast. I am a Master Certified Coach, and I love coaching, empire builders, thought leaders and unicorns.

Hi. I’m Mel Rutherford. I’m your co-host, and I’m McMaster’s first transgender department chair. Well, it’s nice to be here with you today. Mel, what are you thinking about today?

Well, I am having such a fun week because we met this week as a department to put together the packages for promotion. For four of our faculty members, four of our most junior faculty members, we’re trying to get them promoted. And it’s so, it’s so it’s fun and it’s it’s fulfilling when the most senior people in the department get together and just find all the best things we can say about our junior colleagues and their accomplishments and what they’ve been succeeding in, and we put together these really glowing packages and get them ready to pass them up the chain.

That’s really cool. Well, while you were doing all of that, I was on vacation at a music festival, and so I was with a group of five people, some families, some not. And so I’ve been thinking about team and how we had a really peaceful existence. We were camping together. We were going to music all day. We were making meals. We were carrying water, washing dishes. We eventually had to break down the campsite and and what I realized was so cool about this group of people is we weren’t just like dividing the tasks, but we were also talking about kind of what everyone wanted to get out of it. So one person wanted to ride his motorcycle to the event, so somebody else put all the stuff, his stuff in their van and took it so that he could ride his motorcycle. And I’m like, not really physically good about putting tents away, because I can’t get on my knees. So I made breakfast and put away the kitchen, and somebody else did helped with the tent putting away. And it just seemed like there was this. And I was trying to think of the principles of what was good about that. And one was that people let their needs be known early. So it wasn’t like at the last minute, you were like, Oh, I can’t do that. You do that. It was like a day ahead. It was like, hey, tomorrow. I’m wondering how you know how this might all go and so there were no sort of last minute emergencies. And I think that led to some real peacefulness, and also just this sort of curiosity about, you know, how we might share food differently. We have little bowls that were colour-coded, and we’d buy one big meal at the festival, and, like, everybody would have some salad. And I don’t know it was, it was like there was a sharing that is unusual, with five people that aren’t family, and it’s made me think about how teams can look out for each other differently.

Nice. That’s fun. Do we? Do we have a guest today?

We do have a guest. I’m really excited about our guest. Her name is Charlotte Otter, and she’s an author, speaker and podcast host. She’s worked with large companies, including leading global communication teams, and she advises a wide range of clients on reputation, change communications and building effective communication teams. And she’s got a new book out. We need new leaders who master reputation management to reshape the C-suite. So I’m super excited.

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Welcome to our show, Charlotte.

Welcome.

Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I’m delighted to be with you. Good to see you.

Yeah, well, I am curious about how you are experimenting in your life and leadership right now, Charlotte?

Yeah, so two things. Firstly, I’m experimenting with leading myself. So a few years ago, I left corporate, where I was leading a large global team of around 5050 people, and I now. I’m a solopreneur, so I work by myself, and I’ve noticed that I like to do the things that I like very much, and I avoid some of the things that I don’t like doing. So I’m trying to motivate myself to get better at the stuff I’m not so great at. But I also wanted to refer something to something you said, Melanie, you were talking about thinking about teams, and as I’ve been out in the world talking about the book, you know, I talk about reputation for from the point of view of a leader, from the point of view of a leadership team, from the point of view of an individual. And at one of my events, somebody said, but what about the reputation of teams? And I thought, well, that’s something I’ve never given any thought to, but something I’m kind of parking at the back of my head to think about, because I think it’s a really interesting concept.

Wow, I yeah, I think, and we hear these things, especially like, oh, well, that team isn’t good to collaborate with, or, Oh, that teams, they’ve got it. They could take on a little more. And sometimes they take on more and more and more, and then then they’re overwhelmed and burned out. You know, it’s, it’s so reputation is really interesting. Thinking about teams. I love that.

Yeah, I’m wondering what a team should do if, if their reputation has been tarnished in a way that doesn’t resonate with them, that they they think they’re better than the reputation that that’s getting back to them, what? What should they be doing?

You know, I’ve thought about that Mel, and it would probably this similar advices I’d give to an individual leader, which is, first of all, look at the stories you’re telling about yourselves or yourself as a team, and then look at the stories that other people are telling about you, and see where the gap is, and then work out what it is that you need to what are those narratives that you need to do you need to go out and fix.

And if you’re going to fix it, what kinds of things might you do?

Well, one of the issues with reputation is the the trust gap that comes between when there’s a slip between words and behaviors. So a team might have a loss of reputation if they say, Oh, we are the awesome go to team for all your IT. Tech always come to us. And then when people in the organization do go to them, they say, oh, no, we’re far too busy. And you know, have to put an appointment for three weeks time, and it problems are usually immediate and urgent. So I would advise them to look at to see if there’s a mismatch between the narratives and the behaviors, and then try to fix them. Maybe they need to re, start a new narrative. Maybe they need to fix their story, create a story that matches the behaviors that are important to their teams, to themselves.

I imagine one of the challenges is that it’s hard for an individual or a group to fix their reputation themselves, because if somebody says, Mel is a jerk, and then I say, I’m not a jerk, who’s gonna believe me?

Yeah, it’s, it’s a it is a real problem. And this is one of the things about reputation that individual leaders, but also teams, can’t always control. And that’s the slippery part of reputation, that it’s slightly slightly out of control. But I do always say that consistency really helps. So if you consistently tell the same story, and you consistently behave in a way that matches the stories you’re telling, less likely to get those those slippages. But it’s really hard, hard for a team and hard for individual leaders and managers.

What do you think is important for someone at the beginning of their career to think about in terms of reputation?

I’m so glad you asked that it was something I dealt with quite a lot. And we need new leaders. Because I interviewed both emerging and established leaders from diverse backgrounds, diverse identities and underrepresented minorities. And I learned when I was thinking about emerging leaders, I learned quite hard on the work of Porter Braswell, I don’t know if you know Porter. He’s an African American in the US. He is a founder of several companies that always have inclusion as a theme. His latest company is Jodi AI, which is an inclusive AI product. And he talks about effective telling so he says the most important thing when you’re building a reputation at the start of reputation at the start of your career is not just you can’t rely on just doing a great job. 50% of what you need to be doing is talking about the great job that you’re doing and specifically telling your manager not once a year at your review, not quarterly, at your reviews. Every single time you meet your manager, you’re telling them what a great job you’re doing and how your work is furthering either team or business strategy. And also talk about all the times you go beyond there was the time I contacted somebody from outside our department to ask them that. The time that I brought somebody else from outside in to talk to the team about something. So he talks about keeping a record and just making sure all the time that your managers know about it. And I know from leading that the people who did that, on one level, I found them kind of exhausting, but I never forgot them.

In, yeah, there. There is sort of the being a good egg, like, you know, that gets in the way. I think that you don’t want to over share or take up more than is fair on it, on a team and an organization. And if you don’t, then someone else is controlling your narrative. That’s a really interesting thought.

And there’s always this pressure, you know, which is, you know, be the nice one. Be the pleasant one. Don’t rock the boat. And the message that’s coming through is, you can still be that, but you are also the guardian of your reputation, so make sure folks know what you’re doing.

You mentioned the diversity and inclusion in in leadership. I’m wondering how how reputational considerations are different for marginalized, gender minority or ethnic minority leaders.

So I talk about, in the book, I talk about reputation equity. And what I really mean there is, you know, we’ve seen what’s happening in the US with, you know, Diversity Equity and Inclusion programs being de prioritized, removed, completely, language removed. So with the system that is supposed to promote and forge Diversity, Equity and Inclusion falling away, the onus is even more on individuals. Now that’s not the situation we want. We want systemic change. We want the system to be fixed, but in the absence of that, there is more pressure on individuals to look after their reputations and tell their own their own stories in their own words. And now I interviewed a range of leaders from all kinds of diverse backgrounds. So when I say diversity, I don’t only mean race and gender. I interviewed people, an ADHD leader. I interviewed a non binary leader. I interviewed a trans woman who’d been a CEO as a man is now a board member as a woman. A really wide variety of leaders about how they think about their identity, how they and how they think about their reputation and and the common factor was, or there were several, but the main one was, through the obstacles that people from diverse identities and backgrounds come have in their lives, they develop empathy. And because of that empathy, they are thoughtful leaders. They are incredibly intentional about how they show up, incredibly intentional about how they lead and intentional how they use language. And they’re actually in their behaviors, changing organizations from within by being inclusive and behaving in that way.

That’s I really, I really like that. I do think I do have a question for you. I’m, I’m curious about sort of balancing reputation and transparency. Because I think, you know, there’s a lot of messaging about being a transparent leader as well. But I think sometimes, you know, I have a queer identity, males, trans, you know, it’s it’s, where do you share the obstacles that you come across? And if you do share those, how does that impact your professional reputation. And when I say reputation also just the way that other people view you, I think fits into reputation. I’m not I’m noticing there might be a definition or something there, but yeah, I wonder what you think about that, because I struggle with that sometimes.

Contemporary accountants discussing papers with financial data at meeting

Yeah, I can understand why. So by transparency, do you mean showing up in your entirety who you are as a person, as your poor self.

Or even say, for example, when I had children, I had to sue the Ontario government to get birth certificates for my children. And we did, actually, and we won. But how much do I share that story which sort of brings in this conflict and makes me look like I sue people, even though we also, you know, it was, it was a precedent setting case, and it was interesting. So and I, and, you know, I have a business. And I want a reputation that’s powerful and strong, not just queer. And so I think about all these things around transparency and reputation and balance all the time, but I just wondered if you had any insights in your work from what you’ve noticed. Yeah.

I mean, what that tells me about you, Melanie, is it’s a story of resilience, which, you know, if I was coming to you for business or one of your clients, that would be a quality that would be appealing. It’s not, it’s not a story you need to tell every day, but if it comes up, you’d tell that story to demonstrate, you know, resilience and and fighting against the state. So, you know, we’re in a world where where individuals of diverse identities are maybe under pressure to mask depending what locations, countries that they live in. And I’m fully aware that different countries have different different legal rules. But, you know, I think that everybody inclusion isn’t an option. Everybody deserves to show up as themselves. Everybody deserves to live in a world where where they can be as transparent as they need or they want to be. And I don’t really see it as a clash with reputation. I see it more as a factor. It’s not a it’s not one against the other.

I have a question about reputation. What should a leader do? If the leader actually does make a mistake, they screw up, they’ve done something that’s going to impact the organization or people in the organization, and they know that that is going to be a hit to their reputation. What? What do you do about that?

Yeah, I worked in crisis comms, and we had quite a lot of experience with this. It’s important to apologize fast and acknowledge the problem. The longer you leave it the more time either the community or the internet have to fill the space with narratives. So we all saw what happened with the Coldplay CEO. They were silent. Astronomer was silent. The Internet filled the space with memes. So act with speed. Acknowledge, apologize, acknowledge with empathy that people might have been hurt, and then say, you know, we looking into it, or I personally am looking into it, and I’m going to find, you know, ways to make to work, make reparations. My only caution would be, don’t make giant promises about what those reparations might be because you may not be able to fulfill those and then that becomes yet another reputational gap. So move fast. Apologize with empathy. Say you’re finding ways to fix it, and you’ll come back to your community or to the world in general, with you know what your plan is going to be.

That makes a lot of sense.

And speed is of the essence with these things, especially now, especially now with, you know, social media moving like that.

What else should we ask you? What else should we talk about with you?

Well, I’d love to talk a little bit about the book and what led to it. So if I may, may I do that. Thank you. So when I, when I left corporate in 2022, I was running executive comms globally at a tech firm, and I also had employee communications under me, team of around 50, and I left to start my own business. You know, it was post covid, a lot of people went through a change, and, you know, realized maybe things weren’t for them. And one of the things I did at the same time as starting my own business, I went back to university and I did an executive MSc in change leadership. And the reason I wanted to study change leadership is I realized that all communications is about change. No leaders ever get up on stage to say, Hey guys, I’m here to tell you. Everything’s saying the same. So organizations are always in flux and change. And the world, the context that organizations operate in are always in flux and change. So I wanted to understand how we could be better leaders in that in that ever changing context that we’re in. And it was a 18 month course. It was run jointly out of ashes here Paris and Oxford, said business school. It was an excellent course, and I did a thesis on reputation. So the topic of the thesis was house, how the CEO and the head of comms build trust, to manage and mitigate reputational risk. And when I came out of it, I was talking to my professors, what could I do to take it further? And the one said you could do a PhD, and the other said you could write a business book, and the business book seemed faster, so I decided to do that. I’d also written two books. Before. So I have written two novels, so I kind of knew I could probably do it. And in order to make it interesting for myself, I didn’t want to write another comms book. There are many very excellent comms books out there, and I didn’t need to write one. So I thought the way to make this interesting for me is to bring diversity, which I’m passionate about, into the equation. So the question I asked myself as I set out to interview folks for the book was, what can leaders from diverse backgrounds, diverse identities and underrepresented minorities learn from the tools of reputation management to land, keep or create their dream leadership roles? And I interviewed, as I said, 40 leaders emerging and established with different identities, and had a wonderful time writing it. I was writing it during the American election, the US election. I handed the book in to my publisher on the first of November. So I didn’t know, you know, what kind of a world the book would was going to land in. You know, things have gone the other way. It would have been a softer landing. I wish it had been, but the way it’s the way it is. You know, maybe it’s more needed.
Did you have any big surprises as you interviewed diverse leaders?
I was surprised by the I was surprised by the depth of self knowledge that people had really done the work, really done the work. And it goes back to what I was saying about obstacles. You know when you’ve you know when you when you are non binaries. One of the leaders I interviewed, David naff from India. You know they are fully bearded and go to work and address and they never asked permission to do that. They didn’t check with HR before they went into a new job. So the incredible courage it takes just to show up as yourself, something I you know, it’s a privilege I take for granted I walk around, you know, privileged by my identity. So the courage, the depth of self knowledge and the intentionality about how they lead and communicate, was really moving, actually.
Thank you for that. I love that. Where can people find you, Charlotte?
Thank you for asking. So my website is charlotteotter.com I have links there to my podcast, which is called speech bubbles. I have where I interview many of the leaders from the book and others. There are links there to my sub stack, which is also called speech bubbles, and the links for where folks can can also buy. We need new leaders.
Thank you so much for being here. I’ve loved our conversation. Thank you.
Thank you very much for having me. It’s been so much fun.

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Well, that was really fun. What a great conversation.

That was great. I thought it was really interesting that her response to the question about, if a leader does make a mistake that harms the organization, apologize fast and apologize with empathy.

That’s, I think that’s and I love. I you know, we’ve had a couple of guests on recently that are talking about diversity and leadership, and it really is, I think, a crucible to help good leadership emerge, the knowledge of self and the taking a stand in different ways that that you know you don’t get to go with some default about what a leader is. You have to figure out who you are. I really love that.

Yeah, that has been a theme over our last three podcasts.

I know I didn’t, we didn’t plan a theme, but it’s kind of fun to find one. Well, it’s been great being here with you today.

Go experiment.

Important Links: 

LinkedIn – Charlotte Otter

Website – Charlotte Otter

Charlotte Otter

EV1

 

Charlotte Otter is an author, speaker, podcast host and advisor. Having worked in large
companies, including leading global communications teams, she now advises a wide range of
clients on reputation, change communications and building effective communications teams.

With global experience in companies such as SAP and Anglo American, and clients ranging
from BASF and Siemens to smaller start-ups, Charlotte is acutely sensitive to the needs of
global audiences and crafting stories and messaging that lands.

In a world of wall-to-wall digital noise, it is stories and our humanity that break through.

 

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